Black-tipped Groundsel (Senecio lugens)

Red Earth Trail, Banff N.P., Alberta, Canada, 7/2011.

According to Scotter & Flygare’s Wildflowers of the Canadian Rockies, the black-tipped bracts “were considered by the Inuit to be a sign of mourning for a band of unsuspecting Inuit massacred in 1771 by Indian warriors who accompanied the explorer Samuel Hearne on his expedition to the Arctic Coast. Sir John Richardson first collected this plant near the massacre site, Bloody Falls, on the Coppermine River and named it lugens from the latin word ‘to mourn’.”